The Wideacre Trilogy

My nonchalant dismissal of the courtship Celia enjoyed was now past history. When Harry and Mama spoke of the October wedding, I felt nauseous with envy. Harry’s every other sentence was of Celia and her likes and dislikes and I could scarcely school my face to remain smiling and serene when I heard her name. She was no longer something off Wideacre, as distant and unimportant as the London scene; she was a threat to me that was coming ever closer. She held my brother’s heart in her little hands. She would be coming into my home; she would sit at the foot of the great Wideacre table and Harry would smile down the length of it to her. Worse, most nightmarish picture of all, every night of our lives she and Harry would climb the stairs together and shut the bedroom door, and he would hold her and possess her while I lay in my single bed and trembled with longing.

I did not dream now; I started to think. In the back of my mind a plan was forming to give me the land, and to give me Harry. To forge out of these demented, unlikely elements some stability, some basis for my future. But I could not be certain that it could be done. It depended so much on Celia, and I knew her only slightly. Next time she was due for a visit my eyes were sharp upon her.

Harry met the Havering landau at the steps of the Hall with Mama at his side and me in polite and reticent attendance a few steps behind. I had a perfect view of Celia’s face as Harry greeted them, and I saw with amazement that she was nervous with him. Her pale pink parasol trembled over her little head as Harry brushed the footman aside to open the carriage door. He handed Lady Havering out, then turned to Celia. He bowed low and took her gloved hand. The colour flowed from her face and then rushed back as he kissed her hand, but I knew – with the keen insight of a woman in love – that it was not the nervous heat of passion I felt for Harry. What was the silly thing blushing for? Why was she trembling?

I had to understand what went on behind those soft brown eyes, so this time it was I who suggested a drive while our mamas gossiped over the teacups.

We went through the lanes to see Harry’s new turnip field. Harry rode politely behind, at a distance to avoid the white chalky dust of the high lanes. So I had her to myself. It was a warm spring day, almost as hot as last summer when we had gone to see the harvest, when I had cared nothing for either of them. Now I knew they could either wreck or make my life.

‘Celia,’ I said sweetly, ‘I am so glad that we shall be sisters. I have been so lonely with just Mama and Harry and I always wanted you as a friend.’

The colour mounted to her face in one of her easy blushes. ‘Oh, Beatrice,’ she said, ‘I should be so glad if you and I were to become special friends. There is so much that will be new to me and strange. And I feel so awkward coming into your mama’s house.’

I smiled and pressed her little hand.

‘You always seem so grown up and confident,’ she said shyly. ‘I used to watch you and your papa setting off hunting, and wished so much that I could know you better. And the great horses you rode! When I think now of living in Wideacre Hall, I feel’ – she gave a little gasp – ‘quite frightened.’

I smiled gently at her. Although she had lived all of her adult life in Havering Hall, as the unwanted stepdaughter and stepsister, she had seen little of country society, and had played no great part in the life of the Hall. She was nervous, of course, and it occurred to me that she might want Harry merely as the lesser of two evils.

‘Harry will be beside you,’ I said comfortingly.

‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed. ‘But gentlemen can be so …’ She paused. ‘Marriage is so …’ and she stopped again.

‘It’s a big step for a girl,’ I said helpfully.

‘Oh, yes!’ she said with such emphasis in her soft voice that I racked my brains to think what was behind all this flutter.

‘There is the new position – as the Lady of Wideacre,’ I said, biting my tongue on the pain that the title would go to this baby.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is rather frightening, but …’ There was something more, something else.

‘Harry seldom drinks to excess,’ I said at random thinking of her stepfather.

‘Oh, no!’ she said quickly, and I had drawn a blank there, too.

‘I am sure he loves you very, very much,’ I said. Envy made me faint as if I had an illness. But it was true. I was sure he did, damn her.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s the trouble really.’

I recovered rapidly. The trouble? What trouble? ‘The trouble?’ I repeated.

Her head with the pretty little bonnet bowed low. I saw a tear drop on her figured satin and one gloved finger covered the spot.

‘He’s so …’ She couldn’t find the word and Lord help me I couldn’t think what could be wrong.

‘He’s so …’ She tried again, and I was dumb.

‘He’s so … unrestrained …’ she got out. ‘I suppose it is because he is interested in farming … but really …’

I nearly gasped aloud at this revelation. While I had been aching and longing for Harry and trembling at his touch, this little ice maiden had been refusing his kisses and shrinking from an arm around her waist. Envy made me physically queasy, but my face must not show it.

‘I expect men always are,’ I said, imitating her awed whisper. ‘Is he always like that?’

‘Oh, no!’ she said. The deep brown eyes flickered to my face. ‘The last two Sundays, he changed. He tried to kiss me …’ – her voice dropped even lower – ‘on the mouth! Oh, it was horrid.’ She broke off again. ‘Something else, too.’

I remembered with every cell of my sensuous body the warmth of Harry’s body against mine, my lips opening beneath his and my tongue seeking his mouth. His hand tightening and pressing my breast. That had caused the change.

‘He forgot himself,’ said Celia with some little determination. ‘He forgot who I am. Young ladies do not …’ She paused. ‘And certainly they do not let gentlemen touch them … in that way.’

I caught my breath in a hissing sigh. It had to have been the evening in Mama’s parlour that had made the difference. I had pressed his hand to my breast. I had opened my mouth to him. He had gone from me to Celia hot with desire and tingling with the touch of his first woman – and cold, unloving little Celia had rebuffed him.

‘Did you tell him so?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ she said. The brown eyes opened wider and she stole another glance at me. ‘He seemed angry,’ she said. Her lower lip trembled. ‘It made me rather afraid … for later.’

‘Don’t you want him to kiss you?’ I burst out.

‘Not like that! I don’t like kisses like that! I don’t think I ever will! I don’t see how I can learn to bear them. Mama and Step-Papa don’t behave like that; they … they have an arrangement.’

The whole world knew that Lord Havering’s arrangement was a ballet dancer in one of the London theatres when Lady Havering put her foot down after two children and four miscarriages.

‘You would like that with Harry?’ I asked. I couldn’t believe my ears.

‘Oh, no,’ she said miserably. ‘I know one cannot, until there is an heir. I know there is nothing to be done. I shall just have to … I shall just have to …’ She gave a piteous little sob. ‘I shall just have to endure it, I suppose.’

I took her hand in my firm clasp.

‘Celia, listen to me,’ I said. ‘I will be a sister to you in October, and I will be a friend to you now. Harry and I are very, very close – you know how we run the estate together – he will always listen to me because he knows I have his interests at heart. I will be a friend to you, too. I shall help you with Harry. I can talk to Harry and no one but you and I need ever know what you have told me. I can make it all right between the two of you.’

Celia raised her eyes to my face.

‘Oh, if you would!’ she said. ‘But won’t Harry mind?’

‘Leave it to me,’ I said. ‘I make only one condition.’ I paused and the cherries on her little bonnet trembled. I realized that to escape Harry’s embraces she would promise me anything.

‘The condition is that you always tell me everything about you and Harry, everything.’

The cherries bobbed as she nodded vigorously.

‘Should you change in your feelings to him, or should he change to you, you will tell me at once.’

The cherries bobbed again and she held out her hand.

‘Oh, yes, Beatrice. Let’s shake hands on the bargain. I promise you shall always be my best and closest of friends. I will always confide in you and you shall have thousands of favours from me. Anything you want that I can give shall be yours.’

I smiled and kissed her cheek to seal the agreement. She had only one thing that I wanted – that I would ever want – and she was far along the road to giving it me, my heart’s desire, my brother Harry.

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